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Monday, February 23, 2015

Common & John Legend - "Glory" (examples, lyrics, and, comments)

Edited by Azizi Powell

This post showcases two videos of the song "Glory" from the 2014 American movie "Selma". That song was awarded a Best song Oscar at the 2015 Academy Awards ceremony.

A link to the complete song lyrics for "Glory" and an excerpt of those lyrics are included in this post. In addition, this post includes a video of John Legends and Common's press conference at the conclusion of the Academy Awards (Oscar) event and a link to a news report about Common's acceptance speech at the Academy Awards event.

The content of this post is presented for cultural, entertainment, and aesthetic purposes.

All copyrights remain with their owners.

Thanks to Common and John Legend for their musical legacy and for their vision and activism. Thanks also to the producers of these videos and their publishers on YouTube. Thanks also to all those who are quoted in this post.

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LYRICS: GLORY [Excerpt]
(Common, John Legend)

One day, when the glory comes
It will be ours, it will be ours
Oh, one day, when the war is one
We will be sure, we will be here sure
Oh, glory, glory
Oh, glory, glory

Hands to the Heavens, no man, no weapon
Formed against, yes glory is destined
Every day women and men become legends
Sins that go against our skin become blessings
The movement is a rhythm to us...

CommonVEVO, Published on Jan 12, 2015
From the motion picture "Selma”
-snip-
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selma_(film)
"Selma is a 2014 historical drama film directed by Ava DuVernay and written by Paul Webb and DuVernay.[5] It is based on the 1965 Selma to Montgomery voting rights marches led by James Bevel,[6][7] Hosea Williams, and Martin Luther King, Jr. of SCLC and John Lewis of SNCC."...
-snip-
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selma_to_Montgomery_marches
"The three Selma to Montgomery marches in 1965 were part of the Selma Voting Rights Movement and led to the passage that year of the Voting Rights Act, a landmark federal achievement of the 1960s American Civil Rights Movement. Activists publicized the three protest marches to walk the 54-mile highway from Selma to the Alabama state capital of Montgomery as showing the desire of black American citizens to exercise their constitutional right to vote, in defiance of segregationist repression,"...

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Example #3: John Legend and Common Talk "Glory" From Selma in the Oscars Press Room

POPSUGAR Entertainment, Published on Feb 22, 2015

John Legend and Common Talk "Glory" From Selma in the Oscars Press Room
-snip-
Here's my transcription of the final question & response:

Reporter- "Congratulations and Glory Hallelujah! Okay, you got a standing ovation tonight when you performed. People were in tears in the audience. I don’t know if you saw that. Music is the universal language, how do you want this song to start a dialogue universally about what we need to do in terms of diversity and equal rights?"

John Legend: "Well, I think that we already talked about it today and we wrote this song in response to Selma. And I think that film is so poignant and urgent and current even though the events depicted were fifty years ago.

And so I think that all that is helping us to think about how we interact with each other, um how to live with the spirit of love and not a spirit of fear. And hopefully we’ll take these lessons and continue to learn from each other and recognize each other’s humanity and, um, try to strive toward a love that is public which Dr. Cornel West said “Loving in public is what justice is.” And so, we’re focus on justice because that’s what it means to love people that you don’t even know and, ah, fight for their rights and see the value in their lives. And hopefully we’re able to spread more of that love. Thank you."

"After receiving the Oscar for Best Song for "Glory" from Selma, John Legend gave an impassioned speech calling out the present-day state of affairs for African Americans. One line stood out: "We live in the most incarcerated country in the world. There are more black men under correctional control today than there were under slavery in 1850."
It's become a widely cited statistic, after the publication of Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow in 2011 — which helped made mass incarceration a hot topic of discussion. But is it true? Yes, the basic numbers check out — although the stat is a little misleading.
The key to this is the term "correctional control" — which doesn't just refer to prisons, but to jails (for people who haven't been convicted yet, or are serving short local sentences); parole (for people who've been released from prison but are still being supervised); and probation (supervision as an alternative to a prison sentence). In all, as of a 2009 report from the Pew Public Safety Performance Project, one in every 31 Americans is under one of these four types of "control.""

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I'm an African American mother, grandmother, & retired human services administrator. For more than forty years I have shared adapted West African stories with audiences in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area.
I have four blogspots: pancocojams, zumalayah, cocojams2, and .Civil Rights Songs. Much of the content of these blogs were previously found on my cocojams and jambalayah cultural websites. I curate all of these blogs on a voluntary basis.
Each of these blogs have the primary goal of raising awareness about cultural aspects of African American culture and of other Black cultures throughout the world, particularly in regards to music & dance traditions.
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